CHAPTER XXVII
DOOMED!
The aged man stood for a moment as though tranced at sound ofthe engineer's voice. Then, tapping feebly with his staff, he advanceda pace or two into the dungeon. And Stern and Beatrice--who now hadsprung up, too, and was likewise staring at this singularapparition--heard once again the words:
"Peace, friends! Peace!"
Stern snatched up the revolver and leveled it.
"Stop there!" he shouted. "Another step and I--I--"
The old man hesitated, one hand holding the staff, the other gropingout vacantly in front of him, as though to touch the prisoners. Behindhim, the dull blue light cast its vague glow. Stern, seeing his baldand shaking head, lean, corded hand, and trembling body wrapped in itsmantle of coarse brown stuff, could not finish the threat.
Instead, his pistol-hand dropped. He stood there for a moment asthough paralyzed with utter astonishment. Outside, the chant hadceased. Through the doorway no living beings were visible--nothing buta thin and tenuous vapor, radiant in the gas-flare which droned itsnever-ending roar.
"In the name of Heaven, who--what--_are_ you?" cried the engineer, atlength. "A man who speaks English, _here? Here?_"
The aged one nodded slowly, and once again groped out toward Stern.
Then, in his strangely hollow voice, unreal and ghostly, and withuncertain hesitation, an accent that rendered the words all butunintelligible, he made answer:
"A man--yea, a living man. Not a ghost. A man! and I speak theEnglish. Verily, I am ancient. Blind, I go unto my fathers soon. Butnot until I have had speech with you. Oh, this miracle--English speechwith those to whom it still be a living tongue!"
He choked, and for a space could say no more. He trembled violently.Stern saw his frail body shake, heard sobs, and knew the ancient onewas weeping.
"Well, great Scott! What d'you think of _that?_" exclaimed theengineer. "Say, Beatrice--am I dreaming? Do you see it, too?"
"Of course! He's a survivor, don't you understand?" she answered, withquicker intuition than his. "He's one of an elder generation--heremembers more! Perhaps he can help us!" she added eagerly. Andwithout more ado, running to the old man, she seized his hand andpressed it to her bosom.
"Oh, father!" cried she. "We are Americans in terrible distress! Youunderstand us--you, alone, of all these people here. Save us, if youcan!"
The patriarch shook his head, where still some sparse and feeble hairsclung, snowy-white.
"Alas!" he answered, intelligibly, yet still with that strange,hesitant accent of his--"alas, what can I do? I am sent to you,verily, on a different mission. They do not understand, my people.They have forgotten all. They have fallen back into the night ofignorance. I alone remember; I only know. They mock me. But they fearme, also.
"Oh, woman!"--and, dropping his staff a-clatter to the floor, hestretched out a quivering hand--"oh, woman! and oh, man fromabove--speak! Speak, that I may hear the English from living lips!"
Stern, blinking with astonishment there in the half-gloom, drew near.
"English?" he queried. "Haven't you ever heard it spoken?"
"Never! Yet, all my life, here in this lost place, have I studied anddreamed of that ancient tongue. Our race once spoke it. Now it islost. That magnificent language, so rich and pure, all lost, foreverlost! And we--"
"But what _do_ you speak down here?" exclaimed the engineer, witheager interest. "It seemed to me I could almost catch something of it;but when it came down to the real meaning, I couldn't. If we couldonly talk with these people here, your people, they might give us somekind of a show! Tell me!"
"A--a show?" queried the blind man, shaking his head and laying hisother hand on Stern's shoulder. "Verily, I cannot comprehend. Anentertainment, you mean? Alas, no, friends; they are not hospitable,my people. I fear me; I fear me greatly that--that--"
He did not finish, but stood there blinking his sightless eyes, asthough with some vast effort of the will he might gain knowledge oftheir features. Then, very deftly, he ran his fingers over Stern'sbearded face. Upon the engineer's lips his digits paused a second.
"Living English!" he breathed in an awed voice. "These lips speak itas a living language! Oh, tell me, friends, _are_ there now men ofyour race--once our race--still living, up yonder? _Is_ there such aplace--is there a sky, a sun, moon, stars--verily such things now? Oris this all, as my people say, deriding me, only the babbling of oldwives' tales?"
A thousand swift, conflicting thoughts seemed struggling in Stern'smind. Here, there, he seemed to catch a lucid bit; but for the momenthe could analyze nothing of these swarming impressions.
He seemed to see in this strange ancient-of-days some last andlingering relic of a former generation of the Folk of the Abyss, arelic to whom perhaps had been handed down, through countlessgenerations, some vague and wildly distorted traditions of the daysbefore the cataclysm. A relic who still remembered a little English,archaic, formal, mispronounced, but who, with the tenacious memory ofthe very aged, still treasured a few hundred words of what to him wasbut a dead and forgotten tongue. A relic, still longing for knowledgeof the outer world--still striving to keep alive in the degeneratedpeople some spark of memory of all that once had been!
And as this realization, not yet very clear, but seemingly certain inits general form, dawned on the engineer, a sudden interest in theproblem and the tragedy of it all sprang up in him, so keen, sopoignant in its appeal to his scientific sense, that for a moment itquite banished his distress and his desire for escape with Beatrice.
"Why, girl," he cried, "here's a case parallel, in real life, to thewildest imaginings of fiction! It's as though a couple of ancientRomans had walked in upon some old archeologist who'd given his lifeto studying primitive Latin! Only you'd have to imagine he was theonly man in the world who remembered a word of Latin at all! Can yougrasp it? No wonder he's overcome!
"Gad! If we work this right," he added in a swift aside, "this will begood for a return ticket, all right!"
The old man withdrew his hand from the grasp of Beatrice and foldedboth arms across his breast with simple dignity.
"I rejoice that I have lived to this time," he stammered slowly,gropingly, as though each word, each distorted and mispronouncedsyllable had to be sought with difficulty. "I am glad that I havelived to touch you and to hear your voices. To know it is no meretradition, but that, verily, there _was_ such a race and such alanguage! The rest also, must be true--the earth, and the sun, andeverything! Oh, this is a wonder and a miracle! Now I can die in agreat peace, and they will know I have spoken truth to their mocking!"
He kept silence a space, and the two captives looked fixedly at him,strangely moved. On his withered cheeks they could see, by the dullbluish glow through the doorway, tears still wet. The long andvenerable beard of spotless white trembled as it fell freely over thecoarse mantle.
"What a subject for a painter--if there were any painters left!"thought Stern.
The old man's lips moved again.
"Now I can go in peace to my appointed place in the Great Vortex,"said he, and bowed his head, and whispered something in that otherspeech they had already heard but could not understand.
Stern spoke first.
"What shall we call your name, father?" asked he.
"Call me J'hungaav," he answered, pronouncing a name which neither ofthem could correctly imitate. When they had tried he asked:
"And yours?"
Stern gave both the girl's and his own. The old man caught them bothreadily enough, though with a very different accent.
"Now, see here, father," the engineer resumed, "you'll pardon us, Iknow. There's a million things to talk about. A million we want toask, and that we can tell you! But we're very tired. We're hungry.Thirsty. Understand? We've just been through a terrible experience.You can't grasp it yet; but I'll tell you we've fallen, God knows howfar, in an aeroplane--"
"Fallen? In an--an--"
"No matter. We've fallen from the surface. From the world whe
rethere's a sky, and sun, and stars, and all the rest of it. So far aswe know, this woman and I are the only two people--the original kindof people, I mean; the people of the time before--er--hang it!--it'smighty hard to explain!"
"I understand. You are the only two now living of our former race? Andyou have come from above? Verily, this is strange!"
"You bet it is! I mean, verily. And now we re here, your people havethrown us into this prison, or whatever it is. And we don't like thelook of those skeletons on the iron rods outside a little bit! We--"
"Oh, I pray! I pray!" exclaimed the patriarch, thrusting out bothhands. "Speak not of those! Not yet!"
"All right, father. What we want to ask is for something to eat anddrink, some other kind of clothes than the furs we're wearing, and aplace to sleep--a house, you know--we've got to rest! We mean no harmto your people. Wouldn't hurt a hair of their heads! Overjoyed to find'em! Now, I ask you, as man to man, can't you get us out of this, andmanage things so that we shall have a chance to explain?
"I'll give you the whole story, once we've recuperated. You cantranslate it to your people. I ask some consideration for myself, andI _demand_ it for this woman! Well?"
The old man stood in silent thought a moment. Plain to see, hisdistress was very keen. His face wrinkled still more, and on hisbreast he bowed his majestic head, so eloquent of pain and sorrow andlong disappointment.
Stern, watching him narrowly, played his trump-card.
"Father," said he, "I don't know why you were sent here to talk withus, or how they knew you _could_ talk with us even. I don't know whatany of this treatment means. But I _do_ know that this girl and I arefrom the world of a thousand years ago--the world in which yourancient forefathers used to dwell!
"She and I know all about that world. We know the language which toyou is only a precious memory, to us a living fact. We can tell youhundreds, thousands of things! We can teach you everything you want toknow! For a year--if you people _have_ years down here--we can sit andtalk to you, and instruct you, and make you far, far wiser than any ofyour Folk!
"More, we can teach your Folk the arts of peace and war--a multitudeof wonderful and useful things. We can raise them from barbarism tocivilization again! We can save them--save the world! And I appeal toyou, in the name of all the great and mighty past which to you isstill a memory, if not to them--_save us now!_"
He ceased. The old man sighed deeply, and for a while kept silence.His face might have served as the living personification of intenseand hopeless woe.
Stern had an idea.
"Father," he added--"here, take this weapon in your hand!" He thrustthe automatic into the patriarch's fingers. "This is a revolver. Haveyou ever heard that word? With this, and other weapons even stronger,our race, your race, used to fight. It can kill men at a distance in atwinkling of an eye. It is swift and very powerful! Let this be theproof that we are what we say, survivors from the time that was! Andin the name of that great day, and in the name of what we still canbring to pass for you and yours, save us from whatever evilthreatens!"
A moment the old man held the revolver. Then, shuddering as with asudden chill, he thrust it back at Stern.
"Alas!" cried he. "What am I against a thousand? A thousand, sunk inignorance and fear and hate? A thousand who mock at me? Who believeyou, verily, to be only some new and stronger kind of Lanskaarn, as wecall our ancient enemies on the great islands in the sea.
"What can I do? They have let me have speech with you merely becausethey think me so old and so childish! Because they say my brain issoft! Whatever I may tell them, they will only mock. Woe upon me thatI have known this hour! That I have heard this ancient tongue, onlynow forever to lose it! That I know the truth! That I know the worldof old tradition _was_ true and _is_ true, only now to have no more,after this moment, any hope ever to learn about it!"
"The devil you say!" cried Stern, with sudden anger. "You mean theywon't listen to reason? You mean they're planning to butcher us, andhang us up there along with the rest of the captured Lanskaarns, orwhatever you call them? You mean they're going to take us--_us_, theonly chance they've got ever to get out of this, and stick us like acouple of pigs, eh? Well, by God! You tell them--you tell--"
In the doorway appeared another form, armed with an iron spear. Came aquick word of command.
With a cry of utter hopelessness and heartbreak, a wail that seemed topierce the very soul, the patriarch turned and stumbled to the door.
He paused. He turned, and, stretching out both feeble arms to them--tothem, who meant so infinitely much to him, so absolutely nothing tohis barbarous race--cried:
"Fare you well, O godlike people of that better time! Fare you well!Before another tide has risen on our accursed black beach, verily bothof you, the last survivors--"
With a harsh word of anger, the spearsman thrust him back and away.
Stern leaped forward, revolver leveled.
But before he could pull trigger the iron door had clanged shut.
Once more darkness swallowed them.
Black though it was, it equaled not the blackness of their absolutedespair.
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